Archive for
May, 2009

So! This has pretty much been my main focus for the last couple of weeks. At this point the basic gameplay is finalised, and I’m in the process of making levels. It’s taking far far longer than I thought it would or even might, but it’s shaping up really well. Even in the test levels I’ve had quite a few interesting matches against the AI, who beats me in virtually every game.

Detonate (or whatever I end up calling it) is a pretty simple game, and I really thought I’d be finished at this stage. Honestly, one of the reasons why it’s taking so long is that I’ve been in a bit of a rut; I’m getting a little tired of going from one big project to another, and it’s starting to wear me out. Whenever I finally finish this, I probably won’t be able to account for all the time it’s taken me.

I think taking the last few days off to work on bullet time was probably a very good idea – in fact, I think I’m going to put this on hold for a week or two altogether and work on something smaller for a while. I have an idea for something short and fun that I want to try making!

The game’s dead simple; the goal is to survive as long as you can. If things get too hectic, you can activate Bullet Time, which slows down enemy bullets long enough for you to navigate to safety. The highest rank is “Martha”, which requires you to survive for 3 whole minutes.

Making this reminded me of how much I enjoy shooters. I really should take a week out and make a more ambitious one at some point!

Just uploaded a new flash prototype, a demo of a little shooter I’m making posthumously for Mini Ludum Dare #9. Right now it’s just randomly throwing all the game’s enemies at you, so it’s not indicative of the actual game yet (it’s also missing the most important gameplay mechanic).

On the third saturday of every month, Glorious Trainwrecks host Klik of the Month Klub, a celebration of improvisational game design! This time round, I created a game called Sine Wave Ninja. Some targets: 1000 is a good score, 2000 is a great score, and anything above 3000 is a hell of a lot better than I can do.

I really love messing around in Klik and Play, but it’s an old, buggy and seriously limited development environment; so this month, my only objective was to try and familiarise myself with Klik and Play’s big brother, Multimedia Fusion. Turns out I absolutely love using it – it’s exactly like using Klik and Play, and it resolves pretty much every problem I have with it.

The first thing I associate MMF with is Ikiki – so, I figured as an exercise, I’d make a game in his style. Hence; naked ninjas.

My original idea was to make one of those timing games like Hitotobasi or Gonbutoman; you’d start on the left, run by tapping z, jump at just the right time into the ocean, press jump again to change direction and leap out, in a sine wave. But, er, it ended up being completely different than that. Probably a good thing, seeing as I really like how it ended up!

Actually, I’m tempted to take a few days out to turn this little prototype into a real game. I think it’s got potential to be pretty addictive!

Papervision is a software mode 3D library for Flash, an environment which doesn’t exactly have a reputation for being very fast – so I’m pretty impressed with just how much this library seems to be able to do without hitting any slowdown!

I made a new prototype! Arrow or WASD controls, all it is is a 3D plane with random cubes and pillar models strewn about.

Tempting and all as it is, I probably won’t be making anything with this anytime soon, though. 3D in general is still very new to me, and there’s a whole bunch of stuff I’d need to learn how to do before I could make anything. I have a couple of ideas, but nothing I’m ready to start working on…

The next thing I’ll probably do is finish up Detonate, which has been sorta half finished for months. Will have more details very soon!